U.S. Pat. No. 4,651,983 issued Mar. 24, 1987 to Long describes a card feeder comprising a pulsed feed wheel which overlies and forms a nip with a feed belt. Cards are fed from the bottom of a card stack by the feed belt fanning the bottom cards forwardly and then pulsing the feed wheel to move the bottom card through the nip. While this arrangement works well, there is a limit to the size of the stack beyond which jams become frequent. In particular, with an overlarge stack, the bottom cards tend to move in blocks rather than fanning forwardly individually.
This invention seeks to overcome drawbacks of known stack feeders.